ABOUT LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL

Founded in 1946, the Locarno Film Festival it is one of the world’s most important and longest-running film festivals. Born as a space for rebirth and artistic freedom, it has always hosted bold, independent, and innovative works, giving a voice to both emerging and established directors. Every summer, for 11 days, the city of Locarno transforms into a vibrant cultural hub, attracting film professionals, students, and enthusiasts in an atmosphere of openness and accessibility. With competitive sections, retrospectives, dedicated spaces for short films and experimental cinema, and prestigious awards such as the Golden Leopard, the Festival champions the quality, independence, and cultural value of cinema, helping to shape new talent and define the future of the film industry.

THE CHALLENGE

The Festival produces and receives a vast amount of multimedia content: videos, trailers, interviews, photographs, and promotional materials—unstructured data that must be stored, protected, and made quickly and efficiently accessible. “The objective—simple to state, complex to achieve—was to consolidate our large data volumes into a single enterprise-grade platform capable of delivering the performance, protection, and scalability needed to support the Festival’s growth,” explains Alessio Vairetti, Head of the Festival’s IT Department. Before the project, this content was distributed across low-end NAS devices that could not guarantee the performance, reliability, and flexibility required by such a dynamic, quality-driven organisation. “We were looking for a strategy to channel our data into a single enterprise-class platform, able to guarantee high performance, advanced protection, and uncompromising scalability,” Vairetti concludes.

This setup had several critical issues: data was fragmented across multiple systems, increasing operational complexity and slowing production workflows; performance was limited, making it difficult to handle large video files; and hardware reliability was insufficient, with tangible risks of downtime or data loss. On top of that, scalability was poor, preventing the organisation from supporting data growth without rethinking the entire infrastructure.

THE SOLUTION

To meet the Locarno Film Festival’s needs, 4IT Solutions structured the project in two main phases, with the goal of building a robust, scalable infrastructure capable of protecting the organisation’s critical data. “Our long-standing partnership with 4IT Solutions was the foundation for taking on this challenge,” reports the IT Manager.

The first phase introduced Dell PowerScale, an enterprise-class NAS storage solution designed for high performance and maximum scalability. Four nodes of 120 TB each were installed, for an initial total of roughly 300 TB usable capacity. Thanks to its flexible architecture, PowerScale allows gradual expansion—both in capacity by adding storage nodes and in performance by integrating compute nodes—while maintaining a single, highly performant, easy-to-manage access point.

Beyond seamless scalability, PowerScale offers simplified management: data is consolidated into a single file system that can grow to petabyte scale, eliminating the fragmentation typical of traditional NAS-based environments. This is complemented by enterprise-grade reliability, advanced technical support, and an infrastructure designed to ensure operational continuity and resilience.

In the second phase of the project, the crucial topic of data security and protection was addressed by implementing Superna Ransomware Defender within the PowerScale ecosystem. “This solution allowed us to raise the level of security and protection for our data—areas that were previously very critical,” comments Vairetti.

The solution enables continuous monitoring of suspicious behaviour on the file system and, when indicators consistent with a ransomware attack are detected, it can promptly identify the anomaly, block access, and trigger recovery workflows, minimising operational impact. In this phase as well, 4IT Solutions played an active role in integrating and fine-tuning security policies, ensuring alignment with the Festival’s operational and business needs, as well as consistency with existing backup and retention processes on PowerScale.

The integration of PowerScale and Superna Ransomware Defender has enabled the Locarno Film Festival to significantly enhance its data security posture, delivering a centralised, resilient, and secure platform capable of supporting the Festival’s growth and innovation in the years ahead.

THE RESULTS

The adoption of the new infrastructure delivered immediate, tangible benefits, improving content management and laying solid foundations for sustainable growth over time.“The results were concrete and immediately noticeable […] Performance has improved dramatically, allowing us to handle even very large video files without issue. Finally, we’ve achieved proactive, comprehensive protection of our content thanks to continuous monitoring. It’s an investment that makes our infrastructure future-proof for growth.” observes Alessio Vairetti, summarising the impact on day-to-day operations, security and scalability. Among the key results achieved:

• Centralised data: all multimedia content is now consolidated in a single, scalable, and easily managed NAS environment. This has simplified day-to-day operations and reduced the complexity of the previous system.
• Improved performance: file access is now faster and more efficient, even with large data volumes. The platform also allows further performance gains simply by adding new compute nodes.
• Proactive protection: continuous monitoring and integration with anti-ransomware systems provide an advanced level of security. Automatic cloud backup ensures content protection even in the event of unforeseen incidents.
• Growth-proof investment: the chosen solution is designed to evolve with the organisation, enabling capacity and performance expansion without overhauling the existing infrastructure.

The success of the project confirms the value of the consulting support provided by 4IT Solutions, which worked alongside the Locarno Film Festival with a method attentive to the client’s needs. “The 4IT team proved not only highly competent, but also proactive and always available,” emphasises Alessio Vairetti, highlighting how “the consulting approach—focused on listening and tailoring the solution—ensured a smooth, efficient transition from the old to the new architecture.” He adds: “ I wouldn’t call it a surprise, but an effectiveness that has clearly exceeded our expectations. The implementation of Superna Ransomware Defender has made the entire infrastructure not only high-performing, but also resilient and secure. “The perception of value is also tied to ongoing oversight: ‘Knowing that our data is constantly monitored and protected is an invaluable added benefit for the Festival’s operational continuity.’”

Words that clearly reflect the outcome of the joint effort. “We recommend 4IT Solutions to any organisation—especially those, like us, with a small IT department seeking a reliable, highly skilled partner.” A verdict that points to a way of working founded on listening, customisation, and long-term technology choices—able not only to solve immediate needs but also to lay solid foundations for future growth.